


No Easy Way to the Stars

by peopleinherearewaiting



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Medication, Mental Health Issues, Mentions of past suicidal thoughts, References to Depression, antidepressants, i promise it's kinda positive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:40:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24756430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peopleinherearewaiting/pseuds/peopleinherearewaiting
Summary: Yaz lingered under the arch to the console room, quietly watching the Doctor pottering about from a distance. She had a favour to ask of her girlfriend but she didn’t want to break the silence just yet. If she was being honest, she was nervous to ask because she knew it would lead to questions that were difficult to answer. But it needed to be done.--------------------Alternatively, I felt bad for all the pain I've inflicted on Yaz in previous fics so I'm kinda making up for it.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 3
Kudos: 28





	No Easy Way to the Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you once again to the amazing Rachel (CoffeeAndArrows) for beta'ing this and reminding me that massive paragraphs of dialogue can and should be broken up with actions :)) Your edits make this so much better!
> 
> Title is from the Seneca quote "There is no easy way from the Earth to the stars".
> 
> Please let me know what y'all think in the comments!!

Yaz lingered under the arch to the console room, quietly watching the Doctor pottering about from a distance. She had a favour to ask of her girlfriend but she didn’t want to break the silence just yet. If she was being honest, she was nervous to ask because she knew it would lead to questions that were difficult to answer. But it needed to be done.

Taking a breath, Yaz stepped forward into the console room and coughed slightly to announce her presence. The Doctor started with surprise, spinning around to face her before breaking into a smile.“Yaz!” she exclaimed, the smile lighting up her face. “I thought you’d gone to bed already.”

Just a few months had passed since the fam had moved into the TARDIS and those months had been packed with travelling and adventures. But amongst the chaos, the group had settled into a daily routine, eating meals together and heading to bed when the TARDIS dimmed the lights for them. That evening, however, Yaz had struggled to relax in her bed, knowing that she needed to ask her favour sooner rather than later. Putting it off wouldn’t do her any good.

“Yaz?” the Doctor called, her voice breaking through Yaz’s drifting thoughts. Yaz tried to put on a neutral expression, not wanting the Doctor to worry, but the Timelord had already reached her side with a look of concern on her face.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “It looked like you disappeared there for a second. Is there something bothering you?”

Yaz felt like she might melt under her girlfriend’s intense scrutiny. She ducked her head instinctively before looking up and seeing that the Doctor’s look of concern had morphed into one of worry. She needed to say something quickly before the Doctor pulled them both down a rabbit hole with her desire to help.

“I’m okay, Doctor, really I am,” she said, finally meeting the Doctor’s gaze, not wanting to cause her concern. “I’ve just got a favour to ask you, is all.” There was no turning back now.

“Of course, Yaz,” the Doctor exclaimed.” You know you can ask me anything, right?” she continued, closing the gap between them and taking Yaz’s hands in her own.

Yaz nodded, clearing her throat to try to dislodge the lump that had appeared at the Doctor’s show of tenderness.

“Could you, uh, could you take me back home? Back to Sheffield?” Yaz asked, quietly. She saw flickers of confusion and then hurt pass over the Doctor’s face before realising how her question had sounded. “Not forever!” she added quickly. “I’ve got an appointment I need to go to. One that I can’t put off.” She squeezed the Doctor’s hands in an attempt to reassure her.

“Don’t do that to me, Yaz!” the Doctor said with a shaky laugh, her face starting to regain colour after all the blood had drained from it. “I thought you were asking me to say goodbye for a second there.”

Yaz pulled the Doctor until their bodies were pressed together. She dragged her lips along her girlfriend’s neck, laying soft kisses against pale skin. “I would never ask you to do that,” she whispered. “I’m sorry I scared you.” She lifted her head until she was looking into the Doctor’s eyes before leaning forward and capturing her girlfriend’s lips with her own. After a moment they broke apart and rested their foreheads together, taking a second just to be together.

“So,” the Doctor said eventually, “what’ve you got to go back to Sheffield for? Is there a specific time you need to be there?” 

She was only asking out of curiosity but Yaz’s deep sigh and hesitation to answer the question were starting to worry her again. It wasn’t like Yaz to try to dodge difficult conversations. The Timelord gently reached out a hand to tilt Yaz’s chin up again so she could get a good look at her face. Yaz’s eyes flickered with nervous energy as she desperately tried to look anywhere but at the Doctor.

“Yaz, love, nothing you could say would make me think that you’re anything other than brilliant.” The Doctor’s voice was warm with assurance and trust. Yaz took a breath and then nodded as if she almost agreed, looking over to the Doctor as she continued. “Come on, let’s go sit down in the kitchen and you can tell me as much or as little as you want about all of this.” 

The Doctor gently led her girlfriend back down the corridor. When they got to the kitchen, she pulled out a chair for Yaz before putting the kettle on and pulling out the box of green tea bags that Yaz kept for the more difficult, chaotic days. When she was done, she deposited the mug in front of Yaz before sliding into the chair next to hers. They sat in silence for a while, the Doctor leaving Yaz to open up when she was ready.

Yaz stared at the tea bag floating in her mug as the liquid became a rich green colour. She knew the Doctor would most likely be supportive, as she always was, but the part of her brain that insisted on playing devil’s advocate reminded her of how much she had to lose. She concentrated on quashing that voice and once she had succeeded in reducing it to a whisper, she took a breath and started talking.

“I’ve got an appointment with my doctor. My medical doctor, that is, I’m not replacing you,” Yaz said, smiling wryly. “I need to get another prescription of my medication.”

“Okay,” the Doctor nodded, chuckling at Yaz’s clarification. It was a perfectly reasonable request, but she couldn’t work out why Yaz had been so hesitant a few moments ago. The Doctor kept her face blank, not wanting to spook Yaz now she had taken the first step. In her mind, she was trying to remember if Yaz had said anything about her health before and running through lists of human illnesses that Yaz might have that she had been unaware of. She came up blank, so looked back over to Yaz. “Why were you so nervous to tell me that?”

“Because the prescription is for an antidepressant,” Yaz replied, her voice barely more than a whisper.

Oh.

That made sense, the Doctor thought. Earth was one of the only planets that she knew of that viewed mental health so differently to physical health. On Gallifrey, the two areas were so strongly interlinked that it was almost impossible to separate them. That explained Yaz’s hesitancy to discuss it. But the Doctor was surprised to learn that Yaz needed the medication because her girlfriend was always so hopeful and full of energy. But then, perhaps she was able to be hopeful and energetic  _ because _ of the medication.

Realising she had been quiet for a while after her girlfriend’s admission, the Doctor looked back up quickly to see Yaz watching her anxiously. “Okay,” she said calmly, seeing Yaz’s nervous expression morph into one of relief. “You don’t have to tell me any more than that if you don’t want—”

“No, I think I want to,” Yaz interrupted, her hands wrapping around her mug tightly as she tried to work through her nerves. “It’s just not something I’m used to talking about and I don’t want you to see me any differently than before.”

“Take your time,” the Doctor said, smiling reassuringly. She left it at that; it would be easier to persuade Yaz that she wouldn’t judge her once everything was out in the open.

Yaz took a deep breath. “When I was fifteen, I started getting depressed. I had already been really anxious my whole life, but then this girl in school started picking on me and I started questioning my sexuality. Everything just spiralled.” Yaz bit her lip and looked back down to her half-empty mug. “By the time I was sixteen, I was really struggling. The pain was getting too much to bear. I started—” Yaz’s breath stuttered and she clenched her jaw, trying to keep her composure long enough to get the words out. “I started wishing I was dead,” she whispered slowly. “For months, I couldn’t look at a car without wondering if it was going fast enough to kill me, or if the bridges I walked over were high enough to kill me.”

Yaz broke off into sobs, the painful memories that she usually pushed away flooding back. She put her head in her hands, trying to hide her face from the Doctor as her eyes became increasingly red and puffy. The Doctor rose from her chair and pulled Yaz into a tight hug, wrapping her arms around her. She whispered soft reassurances against her girlfriend’s neck until the sobs subsided and Yaz had wiped her eyes dry.

“We can stop now if you want,” the Doctor offered, despite knowing that Yaz would keep talking now that she had started. She still wanted to give her the option though, just in case.

“No,” Yaz said, as the Doctor had anticipated. “I want to keep going.”

The Doctor nodded and sat back in her seat but kept a hold of her girlfriend’s hand. She couldn’t fix what had been done to her in the past, but she could at least attempt to reassure her with her touch, gentle and constant, as Yaz poured out her story.

“There was one day—I ran away from school, it was all too much. I walked so far that I left the city, but I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t know what I was going to do.” She took a shaky breath. “I was so close to just giving up.”

The Doctor’s heart dropped to somewhere in her stomach as she thought about how close she had been to never meeting Yasmin Khan. She had to stop herself from clinging on tighter to her girlfriend’s hand, telling herself that Yaz was there and she wasn’t going to leave. After taking a calming breath, Yaz started to talk again.

“My sister got worried when I didn’t come home from school and called the police to look for me and the officer who found me managed to talk me down. Because of my age, she had to tell my family I was suicidal.” Yaz couldn’t help the eye roll that came when she thought of  _ that _ particular conversation. “It was really hard for a few weeks cos they were confused and upset. They tiptoed around me a lot. I started seeing a counsellor after school once a week and for a while, things got better. I got through the rest of sixth form. Things weren’t perfect, but I told myself I was fine, and even though the depression was still there it wasn’t as strong as before. It had been so long since it first started that I accepted the low-level discomfort as normal.” Yaz frowned, thinking about how wrong she had been now that she had the benefit of hindsight. “When I began my training to be a police officer it got worse again, I don’t know if it was the change or the pressure that triggered it. Maybe I just hadn’t been doing a good enough job of looking after myself.”

The Doctor had to bite her tongue to stop herself from telling Yaz that she had been unlucky with biology and circumstance and that she shouldn’t blame herself. She made a mental note to circle back to that discussion another time so she didn’t interrupt Yaz’s flow.

“The world got duller again and once a fortnight or so I would have a few days where I was barely functional. I would call in sick to my training sessions and lie in bed until 4 pm while my thoughts spiralled. Or I’d force myself to leave the house and spend the whole time looking at cars the same way I did when I was sixteen. I knew it was getting bad again but it was the text messages from friends pleading with me to get help when I told them how I felt that really brought it home.” She flinched, the memory of her friends’ pain sharp in her mind.

“I got a doctor’s appointment a few months before meeting you and within fifteen minutes of talking about it all, she had written me a prescription for an antidepressant.” Yaz chuckled, remembering how anticlimactic the appointment had been. “I’ve been a lot better since then, my mood has lifted and I’ve not felt anywhere as near as low as before. I’m still working on breaking bad habits and I have to pay attention to not let myself spiral.” She ran her thumb over the Doctors hand, needing her to know how important she had been too. “Being on the TARDIS with you and the boys has been amazing. It’s given me something to focus on and look forward to.”

When Yaz had finished talking she looked back up at the Doctor, and despite the small smile on her face as she thought about the team’s adventures, the Doctor could still see that Yaz was anxious about her response. She paused for a moment, wanting to get this right.

“Yasmin Khan, you are so incredibly strong,” she said softly, squeezing Yaz’s hand. Her girlfriend looked back down at the table and shook her head in disagreement.

“No, you really are,” the Doctor said more firmly, determined to make Yaz believe her. “Despite everything you’ve been through, you’re still here. You’re not bitter or cynical. You’re always optimistic and you always try to make life better for others. You’ve certainly made my life better. And you’ve not stopped working on yourself either, you are absolutely amazing.”

By the time the Doctor had finished speaking, tears were running down Yaz’s cheeks again. It was so overwhelming to have someone recognise how far she had come, knowing how hard a struggle it had been. The Doctor gathered Yaz into her arms again and let her tears of sorrow and relief seep into the fabric of her jacket. After a while, Yaz sighed deeply, her head still buried in the Doctor’s shoulder.

“I thought that once you knew I was on medication, you might kick me off the TARDIS,” Yaz confessed quietly.

“Why would you think that?” the Doctor asked, pulling back from their embrace to look at Yaz questioningly.

“You might have thought I wasn’t strong enough to handle difficult situations or that I was a liability. I had to disclose it to my boss at work and he gave me an extra month of sorting out parking disputes so he could ‘monitor my progress’.”

The Doctor could see the anger on Yaz’s face and she sympathised with it. It was perfectly clear that Yasmin Khan was capable of dealing with way more than parking disputes. “I would never kick you off the TARDIS like that Yaz, not ever,” she promised sincerely. “Now that I know, maybe you could tell me if there’s anything I should watch out for when you’re struggling. And I want you to promise me that you’ll tell me if you ever need help with anything because I will always do everything I can to support you. Given the number of times you’ve helped to hold me together when I’ve been falling apart, it’s the very least I could do in return.”

“I promise,” Yaz said, tracing her thumb over her girlfriend’s hand. “I don’t think I’ll ever be perfectly alright, but I definitely have too much to live for to head down that path again.” Her smile deepened as she lifted the Doctor’s hand and pressed a gentle kiss to it. “I would never willingly leave your side.”


End file.
